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Tips and Resources
This page is intended as a compilation of information to help new WPI students make the most of the their time here, and to provide a hub of useful links. The focus is on information and resources that are not commonly mentioned or known about, including things that students wish they had known as a freshman. There's a lot of little pieces that students discover only after they could have made use of them; hopefully this page can alleviate some of that problem. The new student Welcome page is a good place to start for lots of basic info. Class Selection and Registration Scheduling Tools These are student-developed and maintained tools, so there's no guarantees about their reliability, but they are generally accurate. WPI Scheduler (Deprecated) - The best tool available until 2016, when it was removed. The author has a copy up here, but the data set is a bit old (2016-2017). There is a project ongoing to port data back to this version of the scheduler from the new one. Contact asgoldsmith@wpi.edu for details. WPI Scheduler (Broken)- An desktop scheduling tool, broken as of 2014. Exporting your schedule into other programs Whoopie Cal Exporter - Chrome extension for exporting to an ICS Calendar file, which can be imported by most calendar programs WPIClassesCalendar - Python program meant to run on a server and provide an iCal file. Instructor Ratings Coursery - data sourced from end-of-term course evaluations, also available in less-pretty form on Bannerweb Rate My Professors: WPI - data submitted voluntarily to the site Closed Courses You can be on an unlimited number of waitlists when registering, and your position on the waitlist is available on Bannerweb under Student Services>Registration>Student Detail Schedule. On the second day of each term, all waitlists are cleared. For most classes, you can join the class from a waitlist just by asking a professor to sign an Add-Drop slip at the end of the first class. Sometimes, you can wait for the waitlists to be cleared on the second day, and classes may still have empty slots left even if the course was closed and had a waitlist previously. In that case, you will be able to simply add the course on Bannerweb. Course "Prerequisites" WPI has no strict prerequisites to any course, though the catalog lists "recommended" courses. Some of these recommended courses are very valuable for the course you want to take, while for others a quick overview of a topic is more than enough to be able to handle the course. Talk to students that have taken the course to understand the background necessary for the course. Campus Locations The schedules of every classroom and hall on campus is visible on scheduling.wpi.edu. This can be useful for finding empty rooms on campus. Diploma Requirements ID2050 is a required course for anybody doing an off-campus IQP; the course also fulfills the Social Science requirement. Most students need 2 Social Science courses to graduate, and ID2050 can satisfy half of that. You can view your credit towards your diploma on Bannerweb by going to Student Services>Student Records>Degree Evaluation and selecting "Generate New Evaluation". This will show you which diploma requirements you have completed and how your credits are distributed. These automatic degree evaluations can sometimes be incorrect but your academic advisor should be able to verify them. Other Resources The WPI Subreddit is an excellent place to ask and answer questions. It's not very well known, so spread the word!